Good morning. Since 2000, the Pantone Color Institute has been naming its “color of the year,” a ceremony designed to make a statement about society, culture and news. As when design agencies painstakingly devote reams of copy to explain the next-level thinking behind what is effectively some Helvetica font arranged neatly in a circle, I love reading about how Pantone comes to its decision about a literal color. For 2018, Pantone has opted for “ultra violet,” a “complex,” “provocative,” but “also a very thoughtful color.” Head over to Fast Company for a bazillion other adjectives describing a shade of purple.

A Fox in the Mouse House

What might a Disney-Fox tie-up mean for the advertising industry? Amid Disney’s talks to acquire 21st Century Fox’s international assets, movie studio and some U.S. cable networks, Business Insider’s Tanya Dua reports that the combined offering would present a larger, more attractive platform—a one-stop shop where advertisers can buy across a portfolio of TV and digital properties. By snapping up channels such as National Geographic and FX, Disney could strengthen and broaden its cable TV offerings. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal documented the struggles with ratings and programming at Freeform and the Disney Channel. And Fox, part of the OpenAP audience targeting consortium with Turner and Viacom, could bring Disney up to speed when it comes to behavioral advertising, according to Mindshare’s co-executive director of national broadcast, Jason Maltby. Your regular reminder: 21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.

Sexual Harassment and the Ad Industry

As we read upsetting stories about workplace sexual harassment from across so many different industries—from entertainment to tech to hospitality—it was a sad inevitability that attention would turn to advertising, the industry born of the “Mad Men” era. The investigation by Adweek’s Patrick Coffee into The Martin Agency’s chief creative officer, Joe Alexander, says his exit last week came after “several sexual harassment claims.” “Several” people told Mr. Coffee they reported concerns about Mr. Alexander’s behavior to the agency. At least one complaint was settled, according to Adweek, including terms that barred the woman from working for parent company Interpublic Group in any capacity. Mr. Alexander said the allegations made against him are false and that he chose to leave. IPG said in a statement it “made sure the right action was taken” as soon as it was made aware of the accusations. The Martin Agency later released an internal memo that clarified that the company had fired Mr. Alexander and outlined its plans to review its sexual harassment policy and initiate workplace conduct and unconscious bias training.

The Safety Dance

As marketers tighten their brand safety controls, some publishers are feeling the “collateral damage,” AdExchanger reports. Earlier this quarter, for example, entertainment site Ranker found brand safety vendor Integral Ad Science was blocking all content on its site, even though only a small number of its articles fall into dicey categories like adult or violence. (IAS says it doesn’t block entire domains, but penalizes sites with “high-risk things,” like pornographic content.) Publishers that cover politics and breaking news can also find themselves erroneously run afoul of brand safety overkill that’s attempting to filter out fake news or violent content. It’s a tricky line to walk for marketers. Brand safety technology comes at a cost and, generally, the stricter your filters go, the more expensive it gets. But if you pull back the filters and chase bigger audiences and lower ad rates, you’re only ever one campaign away from the next embarrassing screenshot.

It’s the Remix to Ignition

YouTube has the music industry to thank for a lot of its success. Most of the “top 10 trending” YouTube videos this year were music-related. The most-watched music video of 2017, “Despacito,” has racked up more than 4 billion views. Now Bloomberg reports YouTube is preparing a new music subscription service, internally called Remix, to take on the likes of Spotify and Apple with a mix of music streaming and video clips. It might help to appease record labels who have long complained that YouTube’s ad revenue share model doesn’t compensate them enough. YouTube already has subscription services in the ad-free YouTube Red and Google Play Music, but combined they reportedly only have subscriber numbers in the single-digit millions. A new music brand identity, without ties to its free video and search services, could act as a logical marketing device to persuade consumers to pay—but its success ultimately rests on whether YouTube gets buy-in from the record labels.

Best of the rest

The trial that will determine whether AT&T can acquire Time Warner, following a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department in an attempt to block the deal, is scheduled to begin on March 19. [WSJ]

Nexstar Media Group has acquired mobile video platform LKQD in a $90 million all-cash transaction. [Variety]

Ad tech company Criteo has sold its travel performance marketing business to Koddi, a bid automation platform. Terms weren’t disclosed. [Skift]

Nike has appointed Lauren Sherman, the former head of marketing at Red Antler, as its senior director of digital marketing. [The Drum]

As Pinterest looks to bolster its pitch to advertisers, the company has hired Gary Johnson, most recently Facebook’s director of corporate development, as its new head of corporate and business development. [TechCrunch]

Some light relief after another long year/month/week/hour on the internet: Giphy has released its list of the most popular GIFs from 2017. [Adweek]

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